WhatsUp

Petria started with “So let’s go back to when we worked together.”

We had the area from Toowoomba West and we travelled around educating people on the future with an NDIS. We also talked to service providers because everyone was somewhat confused about what was going to happen. We had a great time as well and we were very professional in moving ahead with the information that we had at the time

“Where your role was disability, mine was mental health. That is my passion”

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It’s my deep belief that mental health is behind everything. We can all have that experience. Mental health is a big challenge.”

We agreed that working in a community is all about mixing, and as human beings we want to mix with others.

Where Patria sits now it is all about inclusion and that people are able to accept the differences as this has not always been the case and people have been excluded.

“When I started with NDIS as a Community Development Officer it seemed to be a natural progression from the previous forms of state and community development.”

Existing service providers experienced growth and the really good ones were able to work with the transition to the NDIS.

There was also a time when you had to be careful not to promise anything as there were rumours around that people would be able to get this and that, but they had to realise that the funding was individual and subject to rules and individual goals.

“However, I believe that the NDIS is still forging forward. Whether it is in exactly the right way, I think that the model still needs to be a bit fairer for the community and inline with the federal budget.”